Devoid of the typically lighthearted aspects of the circus, Max Beckmann’s Annual Fair is filled with crowded, vertiginous pictoral spaces, focusing on acts primarily seen in the sideshow—many of which were known to be hoaxes—and offering glimpses of the performers backstage, perhaps revealing the artificiality of the circus.

After Beckmann’s traumatic experience as a member of the German medical corps during World War I, the theater, carnival, and circus became increasingly important settings in his imagery, functioning as metaphors for folly, political hypocrisy, and chaos in postwar German life.

Sarah Ganz Blythe, ed., Manual: a journal about art and its making (Providence: Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design) Issue 3 (Fall 2014): 1-62.